Fellow traveler
by mistAndStarlight
Summary: One-shot story of the final stages of the War of Wrath, retelling the sinking of Beleriand from the viewpoint of a captain of Doriath camped on Amon Ereb.


_A fragment of story, placed in my imagintion some centuries after "Back to Nargothrond" and well before "The Dreaming". Setting: final stages of the War of Wrath.  
_

* * *

"Something's about to happen."

Barathor, grandson of Agathor stirred from sleep and looked up at the elvish captain.

Aeglirel, captain of Doriath with no more Doriath to defend, no battalion,  
no company, not even a proper squad, leading a miserable band of human looters  
and one orcish deserter, was looking downhill from Amon Ereb into the blizzard.

* * *

For humans, who counted years of the Sun, the year was 590.

For Aeglirel, the official year was 9811.  
It was generally accepted that Doriathrin years were reliable,  
despite the means of reckoning having changed multiple times over.

Melian had possessed both perfect memory and good attention for detail. The queen was a figure of legend for Aeglirel too, but her daughter she had worked with.  
If Luthien was a reflection of the flame of Melian, then their yearbooks were precise and their history unbiased, but the beginning of it... was fuzzy. The mere fact that Melian and Elwe had spent two centuries walking dream-paths after meeting, was unfitting of modern times, when things proceeded fast.

She had none of the history books left.

Camped on the north-facing slope of Amon Ereb, ruins of Doriath were far behind orc-hosts. No king and no queen, no leaders, no followers. No economy or trade to worry about. No infrastructure. Scarcely any knowledge or treasure to guard - except what the Dwarves had, inside this sleeping volcano.

Dwarves were outright paranoid these days.

The very earth of Beleriand was now devoured by Morgoth's wereworms. What sort of battles occurred under the earth and to what end, dwarves rarely told and Aeglirel learnt not to inquire. She hadn't seen a dwarf for 3 years straight. The mountain stood solid, but earthquakes were frequent.

Rivers had been poisoned many times over but still flowed. Forests were gone, but annual plants and shrubs regrew. Animal populations had gone through dramatic changes. Being large was now a death warrant, it made you a target and left you hungry. (If you saw a fox now, you could boast with having seen a big beast.)

Animals that couldn't nest underground were mostly extinct too. The single winter that lasted three years had seen to that.  
Insects however abounded currently and birds had migrated out of harm's way, returning when it was over.  
Their flocks were great and seasonal movements a sight to behold.  
If you could catch them, you had steady supply of food.

* * *

Her personal yearbook said 527 - not quite as old as the Human calendar, but nearly.

As for humans, they were nearly all Brethil-folk.  
Beör's people were wiped off the earth and if anyone still remained of them,  
it was south along the sea-coast. Aeglirel knew that Luthien's grand-daughter  
had survived to have children of her own.

She had never met them, nor heard anything of them in the past decade.  
Rumours of kinslaying followed by civil war in Sirion had made it here from the coast,  
but contained nothing to draw conclusions upon.

Whether an heir to Thingol still walked the shores of Arda, was doubtful at best.  
And of course, the shame of elf fighting elf was freshly renewed.  
She suspected some of Feanor's sons did walk the earth.

* * *

"Can you tell what you noticed?"

She let go of memories and returned to the present.  
Barathor had risen, pulled a fur coat around him and walked up to the edge where Aeglirel kept watch.

He'd been leading a band of robbers when they'd attacked her.  
Instead of using her Doriathrin flamethrower, she'd called him out by his grandfather's name.

He'd laid his sword down, scared by the fact that they'd ambushed an elf,  
and not a random elf, but a soldier from the old kingdom that once saved their homeland.

It turned out they weren't robbers out of whim but necessity, and preferred the life of rebel warriors instead.

* * *

"When the blizzard weakened for a while, I saw strange lights flicker up north, and I'm not joking, but I think I saw a star maneuver in the sky - indeed quite rapidly, but unlike a falling star. In addition, I have a bad feeling. Such lights are often described in stories, as gods doing battle among themselves."

Not much battle could be done with eight humans and an orc.

How the orc had joined their ranks was an even stranger story.  
Dorguk had come to demand surrender, but Aeglirel had simply insisted on the opposite.  
On a mountain full of dwarves, the weakly equipped company of orcs stood no chance.

Back in those times, dwarves still came out when needed and twelve mirror-flashes passing back and forth convinced Dorguk that the elf was speaking truth. He couldn't go back, however. A messenger obeyed his chieftain. If he'd go back to argue surrender, he'd be gutted. Dorguk had opted to use his horn, and blew "overwhelming enemy" before the elf  
managed to knock him unconscious.

His comrades had fled and he'd presumed he'd die.

"Do you want to live?"  
"What kind of a question is that, elf?"  
"A honest question. Answer as you will."  
"What kind of a life might that be?"  
"After three days waiting to put distance between you and your kin, you'd walk downhill unarmed."  
"It's mid-winter. Not a particularly long life, then."

The blizzard of today reminded of that day, whipping their faces with ice crystals.

"Surely you don't expect us to let armed enemies rejoin their kind."  
"No indeed. I expect to be killed."  
"I can do that if you choose."  
"I won't choose that if I've got a choice, but to go, I need at least a blade and a bit of rope."  
"Why? There are no dangerous slopes downhill."  
"To catch fowl or hang myself if I can't."  
"I didn't know orcs had become so sentimental as to hang themselves."  
"I've seen better times."  
"Your kind is winning, aren't they?"  
"If you knew the cost, you'd laugh. You saw my comrades' weapons. These days, victory tastes of dried shit."  
"No granaries to pillage or prisoners to fry for snacks?"

"Oh, there might be, but we're fourth-class servants in his kingdom now. We die storming solid stone in clouds of dwarvish fire. Serpents send us back and forth, balrogs whip us if we aren't fast to charge, there's no proper prey, earth rots with stoneworms and the Khuzdul poison everything to keep them off. Then he tries to poison them and sure enough, we die while they come breathing artificial air and burn what moves in sight. There's no future worth the fight. This world is at its end."

* * *

Storming dwarvish doors would be like that indeed.

Aule's children played indeed now... with tools that reminded of some ill force of nature that had disappeared - before it all fell down in pieces.

As a result of Luthien's gamble, things had happened that sent history spinning around. Nargothrond had repelled Glaurung, but Sauron had unleashed poison to clear the battlefield of everyone - destroying the host of his master and the host of Gondolin together in the same strike. Finrod had survived, but sailed away to violate the laws, never to be heard of. Next, vampires rebelled and a hapless chap from the ruined land of Nargothrond came bringing doom... bringing Thingol the Nauglamir.

* * *

"Is that truly what you think, and not what someone's ordered you to say?", she had asked the orc.  
"Why don't you find out with your elvish skills?", came the reply.

"I'm not a mind-reader."  
"Then I cannot prove it."

"Then let's talk after the wait is over.  
Make no attempt to flee, and ensure you aren't seen with anything sharper than a spoon.  
I'm not a mind-reader but I can track everything that doesn't swim or fly."

After the three days were over, Aeglirel had asked the orc if he would go, or wanted to be useful. Dorguk wasn't optimistic about surviving alone in winter, and preferred the latter. Aeglirel had found the orcish messenger was good at sensing scent and could hear thought-commands meant for other orcs. Morgoth's forces were careless in their use of osanwe  
and having an orc among your team was a definite advantage then.

In case of the stronger commands, though, Dorguk had severe trouble not following them.  
His kind was bred to serve Morgoth and do nothing else.  
If a dragon wanted something, his first instinct was to obey.

* * *

She stared on and Barathor went back to sleep.

Then the northen sky spasmed in glowing red, as if a storm of flame had been unleashed in distance. Again it lit, this time in orange fire. Then Aglirel saw a shooting star, then another, then yet another...

...she shouted a warning, they started awakening, and watched with confusion and worry.  
Then the sky stopped glowing and the stars stopped falling... and there was an earthquake,  
and Dorguk shrieked in panic and fell down unconscious.

"Wake up! Can you hear me? Wake!"

The orc muttered something distorted in his native tongue and Aeglirel couldn't deciper.

"What happened to you? What is the matter?"  
"It was him. It was my master. He cursed us all, no matter whether ally or enemy, faithful and traitor alike."

* * *

What occurred next was an earthquake of unseen violence.  
Amon Ereb was smashing like a hammer against anvil, rebounding, fracturing at its foot.  
Magma burst from its roots.

Somewhere west of them, perhaps halfway to where Nargothrond once lay...  
...she didn't know what happened, but there was a flash and there formed a cloud,  
a towering, glowing cloud expanding as a bubble of concentric rings.  
At its core, some ghastly light shone constant.

Then the impossible earthquakes got even worse.

After an hour of ceaseless shaking, the surface of Beleriand was crumpled with new features.  
Plains were dotted with hills and holes spilling magma, pierced by rivers of flowing stone,  
which exploded with steam when seawater arriving out of nowhere tried to cover it.

They'd reached the tip of Amon Ereb by that time.  
It happened north of them, south of them, west of them and to some distance eastward, but the Ered Luin...  
...they couldn't see so far. Perhaps the Ered Luin were also falling down.

Dwarf-doors stood broken and crumbled.  
Nobody had exited, and nobody no longer could.  
Aeglirel had ordered everyone to gather wood and shrubs, and did the same.  
They packed the shrubs in sacks, bound the sacks and wood into a raft, and waited.

The light that hovered west of them kept shining, but had grown even more strange, shedding occasional fireballs upwards. Aeglirel tried to determine its distance and altitude and the velocity of the bursts of light, but her calculations came back with nonsense. Nothing that made sense would hover kilometers in the air, light up half a continent and release projectiles that flew away into the void instead of falling.

Then it suddenly flicked out of existance, leaving total darkness - darkness so thick that Dorguk's night vision could not pierce it.  
Only the sound of explosions and the rush of wind kept them company.

The men prayed to whatever god they knew.  
Dorguk didn't pray, having opted to betray the only god he knew.  
Instead he felt an emptiness more severe than he'd felt after deserting.

Aeglirel... kept her facade, and forced her mind to travel paths in past and future.  
She revisited the dreams to check they still existed.  
The dreams existed.

* * *

How could the world break down, if she could still dream of future?  
Did she perhaps dream of Valinor?  
If yes, then it was a Valinor without the Valar.

At long last came their time... to face the sea.  
They shed their armor and left their helmets in a pile.

Dorguk made his choice.  
The orc came with his sword and demanded: "once I'm done, you cut my head off".  
Then he screamed, and pushed his sword into his stomach, aiming for the aorta, crumbling down.  
Aeglirel silently drew her sword and did the favour.

* * *

Their raft withstood the fury of the sea for twenty or thirty minutes.  
Then a rope snapped, then another.  
Barathor fell and she seized him, also falling.  
Waves tore him out of grasp and hid him.

"Use your wine skins as floats!", Aeglirel screamed into the wind.

She didn't know if they'd heard, and couldn't find her way back to the failing raft.

Water-torrents were turbulent, some rolling rapidly downwards, indeed so rapidly that she had to swim with all her strength to stay on surface. She kicked off boots, shed her dagger too and reached the surface.

When she found a calmer moment, Aeglirel grabbed an empty wine-skin and blew it full of air, yanked it shut and bound it tightly to an armor-strap on her upper arm. Then she inflated the second skin and attached it to her left arm. The final and third wine-skin had to be squeezed empty of wine first, and this one Aeglirel bound on her chest. Though the clumsy contraption obstructed proper swimming, swimming had no point if there was nothing to swim towards.

Instead she floated on her back, catching breath when the waves didn't submerge her, and tried to catch a glimpse of stars. The only star was easily identified by its tone, and Gil-Estel was acting strange, wandering randomly, occasionally diving down, as if trying to touch water, then rising again to great altitude.

Eventually the wandering star headed somewhere in a steady line and disappeared from sight.  
Aeglirel let her body temperature fall to the minimum needed to stay awake.  
Water was cold, but not so cold that an elf couldn't go halfway to meet its temperature, and thus conserve energy.

She did occasionally shout "anyone there?" into the gale, but nobody answered.

* * *

After the storm had pounded water for a day, she was certain her human comrades no longer lived.  
Their bodies would cool down, their muscles stiffen and they'd lose their grasp of wakefulness.  
An elf could continue for many more days.

She counted many times of the wandering star reappearing and skimming the sea in distance.  
On the third day, she felt water convey a terrible blast from underneath and waves became restless again.  
Aeglirel reckoned something had ruptured underground.

Perhaps it was a dwarvish city collapsing, or magma meeting water.  
If it was a city, useful debris might float up.  
Could she try find some and make another raft?  
There was no light however.

Aeglirel floated and waited, practising her small inventory of useful spells.  
None of them could produce light or warmth.  
Instead however, she started feeling strange things.

Sky remained cloudy, but wind sprang up and never stopped, speeding in one direction.  
Water likewise obtained direction, and headed towards there, slower.  
From that direction rose a glow.

Aeglirel righted herself in water, dove a little and surfaced at some speed, using the moment to take a look beyond wave-crests.  
It was in reachable distance.

She decided to swim towards the light-source, even if wind had become an incessant jet and water now carried her like a river.  
In addition, wind was turning warm and water ever colder.

* * *

By the time she estimated it to be a kilometer off, Aeglirel understood the process ended with a column of steam shooting upwards to form a mass of clouds.  
Ice-floes appeared in water and even her elvish muscles started to malfunction.

Despite furious wind, waves grew still and she met the edge of ice.  
Ice grew thicker, but her swimming motion sufficed to break it first.  
Eventually Aeglirel made an attempt to roll onto ice and succeeded.

She thanked the water for its aid and said her spell to strengthen ice beneath her, only to understand: it had no effect.  
Everything around her was already under someone's command, a command telling water to yield all heat to air.

Wind on the ice-field became hot and started pushing her towards the light.  
Aeglirel tried to brake, but newly formed ice was smooth and barefooted without a blade,  
she found herself sliding helplessly towards the center of the process.  
Towards blinding fire. Not a good idea.

"I must stop myself, or this will end badly."

/ You cannot stop yourself, but this is safe. /

* * *

She didn't manage to reply, but plunged through a wall of fire and bumped into something at the pace of a rider falling from a horse, knocking herself out.

At first she saw the ice beneath her. Transparent, solid black of depth.  
Rush of wind was audible, but over here, air stood still.  
Eyes hurt from the enormous pressure of heat, but nothing melted here.

"I'm walking east to Ered Luin. If I calculated depth right, it is now the seashore. I would advise heading there."

She stared around, shielding her eyes with one hand, trying to locate the voice.  
He walked into the circle of fire, running his hand along its edge.

"Who are you?"  
"It makes no difference."

"You're not an elf."  
"No, apparently not. Few elves do such tricks."

"You imply that some might."  
"Luthien could have done this on a small scale. Probably more neatly, she had a stylish touch."

"Did you read my mind to determine that I know Luthien?"

"She's gone, gone forever, permanently gone - you shouldn't speak of her in the present tense.  
But no - your clothes are Doriathrin, you're from Thingol's guard.  
Your folk were persistent and smart, back in the days at least.  
You should improvise some footwear if you intend to walk along."

"Oh."

Aeglirel had risen, but found that ice indeed bit her feet harshly.

"You could wrap your feet in cloth. Try these for example."

The fabric was strange but suited for the purpose. It didn't slip on ice and kept her feet unharmed.

"Thanks."

* * *

They walked in silence for a few thousands steps, until Aeglirel spoke.

"What happened to the world?"

"Angband was broken today. Morgoth was bound again."

"Angband is very far north, is it not?"

"Everything below us is joined.  
Deep down, the earth is not solid but fluid.  
Mountains and seas are mere decorations, thin and weak crust - like this ice.  
The ocean of fire underneath is far deeper and has far more power.  
If the earth commands, surface will obey."

"So the destruction of Angband... caused the destruction of Beleriand?"

"He meant to strike out all of Arda, but knows too little of the earth.  
I stole as much as I could and once I couldn't store any more, shone it off to space.  
Ended up calling me traitor and pouring all of his energy here.  
Didn't even have the clue to understand... that I was trying to shoot down Eärendil."

"You were called Mairon."

"Perhaps I was that once."

"Do you want my name?"

"I've already recognized you. I read of you in reports, back in the days.  
You're Aeglirel, not that many female captains in Thingol's guard.  
You were lieutenant back then."

"The veil of Doriath didn't hinder you from knowing that?"

"It did hinder us quite a lot, Melian placed the right bet, but Doriath leaked information through its trade routes."

"Why would he want to destroy all of Arda?"

"Jealousy. Not letting others have it, if he can't."

"Should I thank you?"

"If you want so. Don't thank me too much, however. Perhaps he didn't want _me_ to have it."

"So, do you also want the earth for yourself? Are you allowed to take and have such things?  
I assume you understand it better... but the creatures on top of it?  
Do you understand them, do they understand you?"

"I do understand the earth alright.  
I need it for my purposes, but have no interest in the creatures or in owning all.  
I admit I do not understand the others here - nearly as well as I should."

"Thank you anyway, because you probably helped a lot of them."

"And brought incredible doom to others. No big deal.  
They'll be telling stories of this for their remaining history."

"Why do you walk? You can probably fly."

"Eärendil is pretty busy looking for survivors, and Cirdan's lads aren't sleeping either.  
I'd prefer if he didn't know who tried to shoot him down, thus I manufacture clouds and ice, and walk."

"Eärendil is the wandering star then?"

"Sorry, I assumed you knew.  
Eärendil and Elwing sailed to Valinor.  
I don't know what has passed there, but he's an elf of the void now,  
and sails his ship in skies. Did you see the dragon, by the way?"

"No. I saw vague traces of great flame in the north."

"How odd... for the biggest creature ever to exist... to go out like a drowned fly, without even being properly seen.  
It was Ancalagon... magnificent, big as a mountain, hungry too.  
It slept all the time, since nobody could feed it.  
It was a mistake, however.  
Far too clumsy to avoid darts.  
Little darts falling from the void."

* * *

On the second day of walking, Aeglirel ate the soaked-and-dried bit of waybread in her pocket.  
Mairon asked if she needed rest or food, but she said no.  
On the third day, they reached the shore.

Everything up to five hundred meters was razed clean of vegetation.  
The shore had faced a wave.

"Get some high ground before you sleep. Another wave may come, but not as high."  
"Thanks for helping, goodbye," she said and collapsed under a tree, ignoring his advise.  
"Goodbye."

* * *

Aeglirel dreamt of sleeping in sunshine.  
Sun was invading her room through a south-facing window, but she was really tired and the pillow really soft.

"Go away, damn it, I want to rest!"

"She probably does need to rest."

"Please, lady, we don't want to disturb you for long.  
Only tell us if you need assistance, and wherefrom do you come?  
Also, is this stone safe?"

"Um, sorry. I thought I was speaking to the sun."

The two elves smiled, and one of them realized it was his first smile since the tsunami.  
The woman sleeping under a tree by the glow of a strange stone rubbed her eyes and rose.

"I am Aeglirel from Doriath.  
I recently lived on Amon Ereb, until the world broke down.  
I do need assistance, if you have any food. I could eat a moose uncooked."

"To spare the moose from danger, we better offer soup. Our camp is half a mile upward. We advise you join us, the sea is very threatening and restless still. What is this thing, however? I've never seen anything alike."

"My traveling companion must have left it, perhaps to provide me warmth. I don't know what it is either. Lest it cause a fire, we better make something to carry it along."

The stone glowed for another week and then went out.


End file.
